


All That Glitters and All That Dulls

by jojotier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abstract, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, F/F, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Horror, Psychic Abilities, Surreal, Thriller, basically im trying to get a little surreal with rose's powers whoops, but more like ghost adventurers, its supposed to be more akin to something campy you'd hear around the fire, not really meant to be too horrifying though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 21:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11388954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: Rose is a medium on a ghost hunting show started by her friends, one that they don't listen to when she tries to warn them against the more dangerous locales. Due to this, it's up to Rose to run around behind the scenes, appeasing spirits and making sure her group can live to see another day. One night in the old Serket mansion, while searching for the malevolent source in the basement, she comes across a strange glowing woman with steps that glitter jade green...ON HIATUS (and in desperate need of a rewrite)





	All That Glitters and All That Dulls

**Author's Note:**

> Now this has been something I've been wanting to do for ages! I mean, just think of all the silly ghost hunting shows you've seen. John totally fits as the host of that. Then I got to thinking- what if there really were ghosts? Well some of them would have had to have been pretty malevolent right? So that's where Rose comes in!
> 
> Honestly, I hope you enjoy, because I started experimenting with a different sort of writing style and tried to make it more descriptive, especially since Rose's powers are primarily vision based, haha.
> 
> Thank you for reading!!

“Hello everyone, and welcome to the third installment of-- drum roll please…”

“On it.”

“Dave, that’s beatboxing!! How is that- you know what, you do your nerdy crap, I’ll just…”

The camera shifted away from the old building of its opening establishing shot to a faceful of John Egbert, a silly bucktoothed smile on his face. Rose, who had long since given up attempting to wrest the camera from the grip of someone who had all the stubbornness of a highly involved director doing camera work for his magnum opus and not some shitty youtube series, just rolled her eyes as John attempted to video himself. It was the fond sort of eye roll, though, the eye roll she had given many a feline as it continued on its quest to do something idiotic for its own personal satisfaction. Now if only she could bring herself to be so fond of the fact that no one seemed to have heeded her warning about this particular building. It was a curse, truly, having so much worry for her friends and yet so much knowledge that could in one fell swoop jeopardize them.

“Welcome to the third installment of Sburban Spectre Search! I’m John, and I’m joined by my buddy and camera guy Dave over there- you could hear him being bad at beatboxing,”

“Aw man, what? That’s just cold. I thought we were supposed to be finding tundra spots in-”

“My sis, technician and inventor Jade,”

Two cameras panned over to Jade as she turned to them, waving, “Hi there!!”

“and our resident psychic and paranormal expert, Rose!” John turned his camera on her and she gave a wry smile, nodding in acknowledgement.

“I’m afraid that information is true- and it’s  _ also _ true that the rest of my team is tragically lacking in the listening skills department that should have been drilled into them back in preschool.” Rose said dryly, crossing her arms over her chest. 

John laughed behind the camera, delighted by what he likely presumed was the best fortune that they could get. Sure, over the course of this little series of theirs (which was less of a ‘course’ and more of a ‘short foray’ at this point with two episodes) they had visited completely, legitimately haunted locations, but to the rest of her cast, they had simply turned up disappointments. The abandoned amusement park yielded nothing for the camera, and Rose’s house, even less than nothing- Rose was going to make damn sure the same result happened here.

The routine was already so set that Rose could count out the steps as clearly laid out as the narration for the FitnessGram™ Pacer Test. She scouted out a place that was purportedly haunted, and just her luck, it always was. Then John wanted to explore it despite any warnings and then while Dave had fun jerking him and Jade around with noises and other assorted crap Rose did the rest of the legwork and ran around like a chicken in the middle of an aneurysm in the stump where its head would be would appease spirit after spectre after soul to make sure no one died an excruciating, painful death or ended up possessed. It was only the third time that this would be happening, and already Rose had a feeling that it was going to end up being a very, very long night.

Before them the visage of the mansion rose into the swirling grey of the night, its highest point hidden away with the softest tendrils of fog. It had been left decrepit and forlorn for almost a century, its large darkened windows and broken down front door and parlor a mere shell of the place that once held its fair share of less than legal dealings in less than legal bars between ladies simply continuing the olden craft of brewsters that begat the common visage of the witch and the customers wanting to have a little fun without Johnny law breathing down their necks. 

There were just as many uncertainties about the old Serket mansion as there were known stories. Everyone knew that the manor was the home of highly successful alcohol smuggler and her daughter, but no one knew where the Lady of the house swept away to on her own to brew her powerful concoctions. Everyone knew that the parlor was the go to place to jive to the music of the day back in its former glory, the perfect place for the American public to get their fix without having to think about being caught out by a police department already kept in their good Brew Mistress’s pocket. No one knew what went on in the basement, or why it was chained up to the public completely.

Everyone knew that several people had gone missing while exploring this house. 

No one knew what caused them to disappear.

“Hey Jade, you got the EVP equipment?” Dave called, camera pointed up towards the highest Gothic arches of the ancient structure and back bending back to get a good shot. Rose adjusted the strap of her knitting bag and patted the side, making sure that her supplies were still there. It wouldn’t have been the first time that something useful had inexplicably gone missing. 

“They say they had some fuckin’ sick parties back in the day, so we might wanna see if any hot flapper ghost chicks wanna do us a favor and perform a few last follies before they go spiraling back to the dust in special effects ripped straight from Disney’s The Haunted Mansion. Which I’m guessing that we’re walking into right now- fuck, I hope we’re not sued for that shit, I barely have the clothes on my back as is. They’d break my poor college student bank account, sign me off into slavery for the CEO and then we’d have to orchestrate some kind of escape while I’m trapped in a metal bikini.”

After waiting patiently for Dave’s long winded ramble to finish, Jade chirped, “Yes!! And here it is!” Jade held up the device, something that she’d tricked out herself with some of that gifted engineering know how, an old recording device, and probably just a paper clip. 

“Turn it on Jade, ‘cause here we go!!” John was, of course, the one to take the lead when it came to charging into the fray. Radiating so much positive energy like that and having his enthusiasm practically begging for any spectres to stop what they’re doing and take a gander at that all natural food source of pure emotion was a damn beacon that blinded her eyes. Or perhaps that was simply her cold, dark soul yearning to go into the deepest dredges of cliched poetry to make her mark upon the already lashed to the grave horse not even worth beating with descriptions of how the grimdark tended to feed from the rays of the noblebright. Everyone knew the spiel already. In essence- shit was fucked, irretrievably. Time to make sure her friends didn’t fuck up and die.

The group ascended the creaky steps of the manor to the porch, which bowed ominously in places and whimpered gently in others. Rose touched the side of her knitting bag, gently feeling out the pouch full of anise stars and some balm of gilead. To help see, and to help protect. She already made little bags and slipped them into everyone’s pockets, whether filled with marbles or stones or simple paper totems. When it came to the art of spellcasting and protective charms, doing what felt best was key, as was attuning each to the personalities and actions of those she was sworn to protect. Each bag had but one thing in common- threads and thorns, to bind the lot of them together. Rose stepped gently on a floorboard, heard the telltale crackle of splintering wood, and let her hands instinctively reach out to grip onto Jade’s sleeve, keeping her from falling through.

Jade let out a little yelp, camera shaking wildly in her hand as she regained her footing after nearly going through the floor, before looking back at Rose sheepishly. There was the telltale crackle of splintering wood, and the floor where Jade had nearly stepped collapsed in on itself partially. Had Jade stepped any harder, such as to bear her own weight, it would have fallen through completely, taking her down with her. 

“Thanks, Rose!! Man, I still don’t know how you do that!” 

“Do what?” Rose said, playing innocent. “I merely heard the floor around it creak more than usual- just a tad louder, really. If you listen close, you can tell when the floor will cave in.” That was only half bullshit- in all actuality, their listening close to their steps will make them more liable to watch out for themselves, and when they hear a more ominous than usual creak, they’ll likely avoid the fatal path. Once again, psychology aided Rose in her long quest to make sure her little band of miscreants didn’t end up belly up in the near future.

As John stepped over the threshold, he whispered in a voice best fit for the stage, keeping as close to the doorframe as possible, as if that would make for a good shot of him presenting the dank, dark interior of the mansion. Which was almost completely pitch black, except for three odd rays of dim moonlight cutting through the dusty velvet drapes covering every window and slicing the air with silvery knives that left flakes of metal and other miscellaneous crap in its wake. Dave tried to work with the shot for a moment, gave up, and then just turned on the night vision. John tried to make himself more solemn, as if this entire foray weren’t exhaustingly exciting for him, as he said with almost quiet reverence. 

“We’re about to head into the first floor of the mansion- they say that this was where the Marquise held elaborate parties for the wealthy, bribing police officers and politicians with all the booze money she’d been steadily collecting. They also say that this is where her daughter would try to seduce young men and, after getting them alone, kill them and drain them of their blood! Isn’t that exciting?!”

“I dunno, getting macked on by discount Dracula until all my blood rushed outta my jimmies sounds way less sexy than any schmuck on the internet would make it out to be. If that vamp chick don’t sparkle in the sunlight like a cheap half assed job done for the nearest Halloween city brand adult party  _ and _ have abs then what’s the point?” Dave said as the both of them slid through the door, not even caring about the macabre subject matter passing so easily through their mouths. Being outside the manor wasn’t so bad, but once Rose entered, it felt as if the air had knocked straight out of her lungs.

Looks could be deceiving, and the inside of this place had far worse mojo than she could have felt even outside the manor. It bore down on her from all sides, pressing, slithering around her wrists and ankles with insistent fingers. Not quite claws- it wasn’t malevolent around them specifically just yet. But there was definitely something in the house, something that made Rose’s throat seize up as if the three bands of light dancing across the darkened room were coiling about her neck.

“Rose, are you okay?” Jade asked gently, trying to touch Rose’s arm with the hand that was occupied with the EVP device she had specially made. It didn’t really work, and all Rose could feel was the scrape of metal and brush of fingers across her raised flesh, but the sentiment was noted and appreciated in a small measure. Legitimate sentiment. Still such an enigma to be face to face with.

“Yes, I’m fine. I was just trying to find the best place for you lot to find the best spirits.” Rose said, reaching into her knitting bag for her flashlight. For a moment, she was annoyed, assuming that it’d been spirited away by the tendrils of night that brushed past the back of her neck, but no. It was simply under her scarf. Silly her. “After all, we wouldn’t want to leave here empty handed, now would we?” Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem if those spirits who liked taking hands got their way, but this was all supposed to be an exercise in patience and understanding, rather than not tearing her hair out every time her friends even stepped in a direction that even slightly crossed into the path of danger. But God, did these lovable assholes who were implicit in making her life a living hell every month push her sometimes…

“Cool beans.” Dave said ironically, probably making some kind of gesture such as nodding with his shades glimmering in the dim light to show his cool in that moment, as if being in the middle of a maelstrom of haunted activity was nothing big. 

“Cool beans!!” John said unironically, definitely blinking hard and pulling a face when Rose ‘accidentally’ shined her flashlight directly into his eyes. Serves him right for being so damn persuasive with the other two in getting them to come here in the first place. Asshole. 

She let out a gentle breath as she shined the light across the floor, stirring up more particles and chasing the thick velvet blackness away from her vision. The dust and dark wasn’t helping her much. At least, not right then, when she couldn’t just rely on her sight. Seeing her actually start to work would probably freak her friends out more than the threat of ghosts would. So she closed her eyes and with her free hand reached into her knitting bag to fondle the her protection and spell enhancement bag to fondle it as gently and discreetly as the lover in some shitty harlequin novel. The source of the malevolence was towards the basement- but it moved around the house, seemingly preferring the stairways and a certain few rooms. It might be dangerous for her friends to go upstairs, but it might be their only option, since the presence was so strong there below. 

“Upstairs.” She finally said, finding two cameras on her. “If you go upstairs, that’s where the quarters of the Marquise and her daughter are, and that’s where the majority of their presence lies. We’ll find our best leads up there, I guarantee you.” 

“Awesome!!” John said, grinning wildly as he flicked his own flashlight on. “Alright Jade, you come with!! Dave, you stick with Rose down here, alright?” 

“Yeah yeah, got it down tighter than Scooby Doo. I am all over this horror movie trope of splitting the gang up.” Dave waved them off, and Rose watched the both of them go off down the hall towards the stairs. She walked alongside John, stepping gingerly up the carpeted stairs, and meeting no resistance whatsoever. The oppressive atmosphere let up a bit, even as she slipped and nearly took a tumble with the EVP device and camera in her hands. It almost felt like hands, but there weren’t any- that time, she was sure it was her imagination. 

Rose cleared away her vision as she stepped to the top stair, greeted once again with the front room and the broken beams that littered the floor in strange, almost deliberate patterns. Then she turned to Dave and said, “Enough time has passed, so you’re free to go- I’m going to go see if there’s anything interesting around.” 

Dave and Rose had been through this scenario before, and already they had their own plans figured out. Dave didn’t believe in this, and Rose was happy to let him go mostly on his way, since he mostly kept to tailing John and Jade from afar and making random shit happen to make it seem as if it was a “real haunting”. Rose went off to the place where the most malevolent energy seemed to be, and disposed of the main source, or at the very least appeased it for the rest of the night so that she could eventually rejoin her friends with vague tales full with half correct addled bullshit to give them a riddle. It was funny to watch them try to figure out whether or not she was being legitimately sincere or if she was merely being somewhat facetious. 

“Yeah, yeah, you do that- I got hot flapper ghosts to pretend to be. Think that fancy EVP thing’ll be able to turn my heavenly rapping into some good ol’ fashioned folly shit?” Dave said, likely already gearing up to delete any footage he took from this point onward. After all, he did have the slightest tendency to talk to himself when left alone. That could be troublesome for when trying to make it seem as if he wasn’t doing random shit just for the sake of trying to punk their friends. 

“Who knows?” Rose said, shrugging. “I don’t. But do be careful, brother dear- the ghouls may not consume your tender, virile flesh tonight, but the crumbling floors of this old building will be sure to gnash their wooden maws on your bones as they grind them to the shitty pixie dust of a thousand dark elves.”

“Yeah, likewise. Don’t go summoning Satan if you don’t have a virgin sacrifice nearby on the off chance he’s feeling grumpy.” Dave snarked back.

“Oh please,” Rose scoffed, “Satan prefers his sacrifices thoroughly debauched, thank you very much. Now go on your way. I have some exploring to do on my own.” Dave snorted, then turned and stepped gingerly over the fallen scaffolding of a renovation that was never finished, or perhaps just another one of those strangely placed beams, and disappeared from her sight altogether. All her friends may have disappeared from her sight, but that didn’t mean that Rose wasn’t keeping an eye on them from the dried thorns in their charm pouches.

Now alone and separated from her friends, acting as the perfect horror movie victim, Rose turned towards the maw of danger and began to make her way across the front parlor and into the nearby drawing room. She supposed that having an open floor plan and only the most essential rooms for company at the ready were essential to hide the labyrinth that she was sure to find. In a sense, it made her job slightly easier, because they all led around to the same place eventually- the basement. The place where apparently all the magic in this damned place was happening. Wasn’t that all just a welcoming thought? 

She stepped over the broken down remains of a table, flashlight sweeping over a wall to where a half finished graffiti saying covered the face of a torn painting set in a frame moldy and overgrown with holes. Rose’s foot gently pushed aside a metal can, making a pitiful sound as it rolled away. In the dark surrounding the scattered light of her flashlight, everything was still in a way that was deafening, moving with the silent spread of something stretching itself long and thin. 

Her flashlight touched the torn frill of a dress in the far off corner, draped upon the mantle of a fireplace as if hung to dry, and strangely, it was something that gave her pause. Rose didn’t know much about the etiquette of the twenties, but she was at least fairly certain that something so intricate, something that, upon closer inspection and with a little more light, should have been worn by the dashing niece at her coming out party out in the ballroom to dance the night away with all the eligible bachelors attempting to woo her for a shot at the family fortune, shouldn’t have been left so carelessly. Even stranger, it didn’t even seem the slightest bit dusty, torn though it was. As though someone had specially laid it out and taken excellent care of a dress that Rose knew should have fallen apart years ago.

No living person could stay here. Rose knew that much- there was no chance of a squatter amongst the high architecture or curtains of this manor. Anyone attempting to take refuge would simply be swallowed whole by the darkness that tugged insistently at Rose’s skirt, tugging weakly at her hair and trying to nip with gums sans the teeth. No living human would be able to make this place home.

Her flashlight flickered gently, reminding her to put in new batteries. It also reminded her to save the power- Rose may need an extra source of light, should anything that happened tonight go horribly awry. With a flashlight now loaded with functional batteries and a string of beads and a small jar of dried anise stars wrapped around her neck while fennel and lavender flowers laced her arms, Rose shut off her flashlight, plunging the room into total abyssal darkness. For a moment, everything was covered with thick curtains of obsidian, cutting into her eyes so sharply that she needed to shut them away from the bright black that threw her into vertigo. 

Before she could let her eyes adjust and her feet hit the ground she took one step forward, and then another. Behind her closed lids were the echoes of color, sounds and vibrations showing up at colored ripples stretching infinitely outward. Rose still needed to get her footing here, but the anise stars helped to focus her sight, and the colored flower bands around her arms helped bathe the darkened world around her in purples and yellows, draping themselves in outlines and shapes across her vision. Every bead rattled gently against her neck, as if each one was vibrating, and she could feel the warm glow swirling around her neck and settling down the raised hairs. The darkened shapes and dust receded, and Rose took a moment to find her footing and make sense of it.

The broken down fixtures and torn dress shone in yellow and orange, standing bright and sheer against the blackness. A perfectly immaculate room was just above and below that, outlined in purple, showing that the dress shouldn’t have been on the mantlepiece. The purple clock on the wall had the vague lavender outline of a pendulum swing, while on the ground lay the broken brass colored shards that still remained. Walking past her in purple was the vague outline of someone with long hair, a skirt trailing behind her.

That was the one big drawback to this kind of sight. Everything was done up in simple, abstract lines, like the bare bones of a painting yet to be completed, painted lines showing on black canvas. She stepped through a two dimensional world brought to the third dimension, and now she knew that it was safe to open her eyes, because she could no longer see normally. 

For Rose, it was like walking a fine tightrope, suspended between everything to catch glimpses of many things at once. She could still feel the malignant growls and see the vague outline of ugly blue and red beings ringing either side of her, but they looked like mere cross sections of what she was sure would have been a terrifying shape. If she had viewed such an eldritch creature as the one to her left normally, for instance, Rose would have seen nothing more than a terrifying mass of tendrils and teeth. As was, it was little more than a paper cut out with sharp triangle shapes, gliding along her periphery until it was gone again. 

Rose stepped into what used to be a dining room. Around the table sat the impressions of the lords and ladies of the twenties, robber barons and their mistresses done up in purple regalia and purple prose and purple, bruising promises. They clinked together wine colored wine glasses and laughed with voices no longer heard, and at the head of the table stood the far less vague, far more pronounced shape of someone sitting. 

She turned her head to have a look, but the figure was gone in an instant, rushing off and leaving a trail of dark green in its place. Odd. But there was no time to dwell on that, no matter how curious or strange- she still had malevolent spirits to handle. The figure was strange, but not malevolent. All it left in the edges of Rose’s vision, as the green cleared away, was a mint coolness that was gone in a fleeting instant.

Rose passed through the dining room and was faced with a long hallway, immaculate violet knickknacks adorning the floor broken with gold. Ahead of her, white footsteps were outlined, stark against the blackness and glowing in such a way that it made her have to squint, and then shut her eyes away, and  _ dammit all.  _

Those white footprints had been left by something, and her sight was blotted out to the point where the link was gone. Another damnably taxing thing- she wasn’t able to see so clearly nor concisely in the light. There was probably some kind of irony there, but she was up to her goddamn ass in irony on the daily, and she opened her eyes again to locate the source of light that had decided to blind her so suddenly. 

Rose wasn’t hardpressed to locate the light source at all. It stood in front of her, not even bothering to cover up the brightened tracks it left in its wake. Still, Rose used  _ it  _ in the very loosest terms, because for all intents and purposes, the being in front of her looked female, with spindly limbs that shone with enough bright light to illuminate the corridor around them in tones of dark green. The darkness lapped at Rose’s ankles, recoiling from the back of the glowing figure, and the girl turned to Rose with eyes that seemed so encompassingly large that suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.

They both looked at each other for a long moment. The figure, incomprehensibly beautiful but strange in all it’s thinness, from the thin lips to the thin green marks curling around her arms to the thin body, stood stock still. This wasn’t the normal sort of spirit- if it were, Rose would have felt a prickle on the back of her neck, or perhaps a twisting in her stomach. Never before had something given off so much light, and never before had its gaze sent heat across her skin, as if she was staring directly into the sun. 

The creature turned, wisps of dark hair cut with emerald where it was illuminated from her skin flying in several directions in aimless curls about her head, and she ran off, leaving nothing more than the impression of dots on Rose’s vision and a series of footprints to guide her path… somewhere. Rose needed to orient herself. She needed to regain her sight and have a look around to cleanse herself of whatever the hell had decided to throw such a momentary enchantment upon her. She rubbed her eyes with the ferocity of a child at bedtime, trying to gather the spots of white and fling them back to be consumed by the creatures that hissed and thrashed gently in the shadows around her. In front of her, gently glowing footprints led deeper into the bowels of the manor.

First, before moving forward, she checked on her friends. She walked behind John and Jade, watching intently from her hiding spot behind a bit of rubble, as she looked for something to knock down. The conversation in front of her seemed innocent enough- John was just saying, “Man, things have been really quiet around here… Do you think Rose is kinda getting it wrong when she says this is the right place for ghosts?”

“Maybe,” Jade said thoughtfully, looking around. “or maybe this really is the best place for ghosts, and by nature they’re just shy? I mean, being dead probably does some stuff to you…” That was the understatement of the century. Not to mention, extremely incorrect. But so long as they could rationalize things, it would be safer for them. She blinked and was back, staring at the footprints in front of her, and thanking God that her brother was an asshole with a penchant for gentle little mischiefs so that seeing what they were all doing was easy as anything. Rose could only hope that her friends would be smart enough to stick together.

The gentle glow from the footprints cooled until it was unobtrusive, allowing Rose to look back out into the obsidian darkness until her eyes strained and she had to shut them away again for fear of them being pressurized to the point of miniature explosions. It was an unlikely, slightly cartoonish and definitely gory thought, but the thought of her eyeballs exploding was still a fairly unpleasant one. She oriented herself once again to the darkness and stepped forward, opening her eyes to the familiar outlines of the old and new. In front of her, the footprints had taken on a brilliant shine, hardening against the ground as smooth slabs of jade to bring her through the house, all again on the roundabout path towards the omnipresent basement.

Ahead, Rose caught the swish of grey fabric flying past in a blur. Spirits were not often visible unless they wanted to be. Even less so when someone was looking with the naked eye. But like this, there was no hiding. Around her the little blobs of navy and crimson terrors chittered and moaned in agony, congealing around the point of relatively low malevolence- especially compared to the rest of the house- and both guiding her path and attempting to lure her into their maws.

Rose stepped forward, stepping on the strange, glittering path left to her by the glowing being, and continued her journey towards the basement. 

Rose’s skin prickled against a false breeze that swept between the spaces in the void.

Her breath felt gently constricted. The note that desolation plays slid through her ears.

She had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that, because next time, I'm gonna have a real doozy of a chapter! Just wait til your real ghosts are introduced!!
> 
> All feedback is appreciated! Especially since it's been a while since I've written for Homestuck, haha
> 
> If you have any requests or want to have a look at snippets of writing I haven't posted, as well as some original work, [why not have a look at my tumblr?](http://jojotier.tumblr.com/)


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